Questions to Ask Your Cloud Service Provider...

If you were to sign up for a Cloud Service, be it Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), what are the questions that you would ask? I have tried to list down most of the questions, however, feel free to be extra cautious and do due diligence before you sign the dotted line!

1. Where will my information be stored? Do I have any control or say in this matter? What are the Security laws in these locations?
2. Can I physically inspect your Cloud operations?
3. Can I get historical data on your Performance Indicators along with historical downtime records?
4. What are the Exit Charges or Penalties if I want to switch to another Cloud Service Provider? Will you delete all the data if I move? How do you prove that all data has been removed from your systems?
5. What are your Disaster Recovery Plans & Policies?
6. What are your Privacy Policies?
7. What types of logs will you provide? Can I get a sample log file? How long do you keep the logs?
8. What are your policies regarding my sensitive data during a legal investigation?
9. What are your up-time SLA's?
10. What types of encryption policies will be implemented?
11. How will my servers be provisioned / decommissioned? 

This does not purport to be a full list of questions but tries to cover the majority of questions that you need answers before you sign-up...

Also posted on BMC Communities blog - Cloud-n-more